It's Alive DVD Review

Baby's first steps should have been his last, but no. Hollywood producers can't leave well enough alone and so the 1974 schlock-fest It's Alive has been remade. The writer-director of the original, Larry Cohen, has a co-scripting credit here but I should think that would be all the paternity he'd want to claim on this brat.

The first It's Alive is not a particularly memorable film, but it did boast a legendary TV spot which showed an ominous carriage accompanied by the song Rock-a-bye Baby and a male voiceover intoning, "There is only one thing wrong with the Davis baby. It's alive."  The creature feature was notable for its effects by Rick Baker, score by Bernard Hermann, and tortured turn by Sharon Farrell as Satan's baby mamma. It's Alive spawned two sequels: It Lives Again in 1978 and It's Alive III: Island of the Alive in 1987. Both were written and directed by Cohen.

This version deviates quite a bit from the more action-oriented sci-fi and medical-thriller aspect of the original. Focusing squarely on the baby, its young parents, and 11-year-old uncle alone in an isolated house, the It's Alive remake keeps it simple. (And stupid.)

What happens when you can't afford to hire Jordan Ladd and Stuart Townsend? You get Bijou Philips and some guy who looks a lot like Stuart Townsend (James Murray). Throw in a thinner, young Mason Reese lookalike (Raphaël Coleman), some bad puppetry and worse CGI and you've cast a direct-to-disc creepy kid horror movie. Sprinkle in a few visitors as victims and you've got yourself a steady stream of killings for formulaic consistency. But all the deaths don't necessarily make good scares.

The acting is mostly good, if not exactly outstanding (the poor players aren't given much to work with). The cinematography is mundane, the score listless, and the direction is downright sleepy (helmer Josef Rusnak hasn't done anything I've seen since 1999's The Thirteenth Floor).

It's Alive? I'd settle for I'm awake. Seriously, this movie is a cinematic lullaby and I was fighting my anvil-like eyelids by the halfway mark. But I did manage to take it all in — from the gore-soaked catastrophic birth at the hospital to the kooky climax at the couple's fiery love nest, I (sadly) didn't miss a moment. There are a couple of decent visuals (a clawed hand clutching mommy's shoulder, baby in bloody bathwater), but if you're looking for truly terrifying infants on DVD go with Inside, Grace, or even the silly but undoubtedly infinitely more entertaining The Unborn.